


when all is done, he does not sleep

by dorenamryn



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 08:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16930137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorenamryn/pseuds/dorenamryn
Summary: He supposed this was penance for his sins, for the bloodshed he’d wrought, for the father he had killed. Plagued by ghosts, it was his turn to haunt the castle as if he were already dead.





	when all is done, he does not sleep

Everything in the castle reminded him of what was no longer there. 

He had failed to save his mother, and his father was dead at his hand. There was no warm hearth to come home to, only an empty palace that reeked of darkness and death and lingering rage. Alucard gripped the chair tighter, nails digging into the soft wood, malleable under the force of his hold. His hands were shaking, uncontrollably so, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t reel in the grief that threatened to rip him apart at the seams. Pain clawed its way up his throat, tearing itself from his lips in the form a wrangled whine, raw and hoarse and deafening by contrast to the silence of the room. Hot tears stung his eyes and overflowed, searing a scarred path where they made contact with his skin. He cried relentlessly, finally expelling the tangle of emotions he’d been burying since his father’s passing. And yet, every teardrop, every inhale that reached his thrashing lungs, only served to harshly remind him of the present.

This was all his doing.

He would never hear his mother’s laugh, nor see his father's gentle smile. He would never feel their embrace again. His last memory of his father was the guilt and regret within the man’s crimson eyes, eyes that he himself had extinguished when he slid the stake through his father's heart. This emptiness, the char and ash that marked the floor of his childhood room like a scar, that was his doing. Guilt, unmoving and solid, was an ugly rot that settled deep into his core, eating away at him and chipping at whatever feeble remains of sanity he had left. 

He was no longer the child his mother had brought into the world, no longer the inquisitive boy that had been all too happy to flip through the books hidden in his father's study. Darkness had tainted him as starkly as blood, and thus, Adrian was a name he no longer deserved. Adrian had died when his father had slashed a blade across his chest and he’d buried himself beneath Gresit, and now, Alucard was all that was left. He was an empty shell of a man, exhausted and worn-out by loss and war. Everything that he had once cared for was now just dust and ash.

A part of him wished to return to his tomb-like vault and fall back into a deep slumber, to waste away and release himself from the pain of living. But, at the same time, he did not, for fear of what scene would greet him upon closing his eyes. Would he see his father? His mother? The two of them together in his earlier memories, smiling and happy as they raised their son? Or, rather, would he see the wildfire rage burning in his father’s eyes at the news of his mother’s passing? The fragile, almost breakable look he had given his son before his own death? No, Alucard knew that he could not return to sleep.

It had been many years since he had been a child, but he wished he were one again nonetheless, if only to avoid the silence that hung in the air and the emptiness that permeated the endless passageways. He supposed this was penance for his sins, for the bloodshed he’d wrought, for the father he had killed. Plagued by ghosts, it was his turn to haunt the castle as if he were already dead.

His fate seemed to be that of a wanderer, a premature phantom to float through the premises of his father’s estate, grief and guilt ripping through him until he was no more than shattered remains of the person he had once been. The weight of his actions was a festering wound, deep and red and raw. He was supposed to have fulfilled the prophecy, but he himself felt no satisfaction at the thought. The romantic notions of a predetermined fate would forever be lost on him, for what kind of fate forced a son to kill his father? Where had he erred in life, this one or previously, to deserve such a merciless sentence?

He had never expected to mourn his father. As a child, when he’d been made aware of the conditions pertaining to his existence, he had never thought that he would live to see the day his father died, let alone be the cause. His mother, he knew, would eventually pass, because she valued her humanity and had accepted her mortality long before he was born. His father, however, had always been an ageless, almost god-like figure, ancient and all-consuming and incredibly kind, and for the longest time Alucard had suspected his father would likely outlive even him.

But alas, that reality was robbed from him; he had lost both parents far quicker than he could have imagined, and all that was left was his father’s legacy, his mother’s ghostly painted smile, and his own insurmountable longing for the days which had long since faded into the winding tapestry of time. Left to drift through a house that stood upon a foundation of bone, alone and unfound beneath his sorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> i watched castlevania recently at my friend's suggestion and immediately needed to get this out of my system, oh man.
> 
>  
> 
> [chat with me on tumblr!](https://skywclkrs.tumblr.com)


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